For the past three decades, south Armagh has exerted an immense fascination on both the British and the Irish imaginations.
With good reason, it was known as the most dangerous posting in the world for a British soldier - well over 100 members of the security forces have lost their lives at the hands of republican paramilitaries since the outbreak of the Troubles in the hilly countryside known as "bandit country".
There have been reports that the two governments are negotiating a deal with republicans which would see large quantities of IRA arms being put beyond use in return for a major move on demilitarisation by the British army in south Armagh, including a dismantling of bases and watchtowers.
Sources close to republican paramilitary thinking believe this would be welcomed by the Provisional IRA. The IRA leadership believes constant re minders such as army watchtowers and fortress-like bases only strengthen the arguments of republican dissidents.
South Armagh has always been the engine of the IRA's armed campaign, a place where there was "no room for pussyfooting around, like those wimps in Belfast", according to one community activist.
Irish nationalists have always preferred to refer to the area as "God's country". At its heart lies Crossmaglen, made notorious by its huge fortress-like army post and the fact that the local GAA pitch was taken over by the British army as a helicopter landing pad.
In Crossmaglen the fire burns true,/ The patriotic flame will never die/ And when you hear the battle cry,/ it will be the fighting men of Crossmaglen, an IRA ballad goes.
The helicopters proved to be a necessity as road travel was too dangerous to undertake for the British security forces, even in large convoys. One of south Armagh's claims to fame is that it is "snipers' country". The last soldier to be killed by the notorious IRA sniper (in fact, security experts believe more than one was operating in the area between 1992 and 1997) was Lance Bombardier Stephen Restorick (23), who died instantly when he was shot in the village of Bessbrook in 1997.
He was the ninth member of the security forces to fall victim to the sniper, whose sinister presence was announced by triangular road signs saying "Sni per at work".
Two of the men charged in connection with Lance Bombardier Restorick's death, Michael Carraher and Bernard McGinn, walked free from the Maze Prison under the Belfast Agreement's early-release scheme in July. Only weeks later, the British army began dismantling its Borucki observation sangar in Crossmaglen, an operation greeted by the sounding of car horns by local motorists.
The demolition alarmed unionist and British Conservative politicians concerned at the threat from republican dissidents in the area. In fact, south Armagh has become a stronghold of the "Real IRA", responsible for the Omagh bombing which killed 29 people in 1998. When the Provisional IRA split in 1997, its hardline south Armagh brigade split too, with the 1st battalion defecting to the "Real IRA".
Many of the Provisional IRA's most deadly bombs, particularly those destined for England, were manufactured in south Armagh, one of the most notorious being the 3,000 lb device which exploded in London's Docklands in February 1996, killing two people and spelling an end to the first IRA ceasefire.